Category Archive: Uncategorized

Echoes from Elko

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A single wry word of Chinook Jargon that says a lot. Since the sad shooting accident up the South Fork of the Elk River all the Kootenay Indians left.  They say there are… Continue reading →

Nika illahee, nika illahee!

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Here’s an Oregon Country frontier-fiction piece from post-frontier Seattle, a time and place that allowed an author to use extensive Chinook Jargon. I like that. I also like how the character Muriel at… Continue reading →

English ads in Chinook writing

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A quirky by-product of operating a Chinook Jargon newspaper supported mostly by English-speaking merchants: Advertisements in English-language Chinuk pipa shorthand. Check it out, nasal vowels and all! Can you imagine yourself writing English phonetically?  I’ve… Continue reading →

Raper, Raper, & Co. to the rescue

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Emphases and explications added freely by yr editor. — DDR I’m inferring that someone got on this Nanaimo newspaper reporter’s case about his poor command of Chinook Jargon. Look at the timing of… Continue reading →

Chinese case at Osoyoos

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A short note today on a 4-step chain of interpreters in a court case involving folks of several cultures. The case was an interesting one, there being two Chinese and one Chinook and… Continue reading →

Jack you patlach me shirt

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“Narrative of the Voyage of H.M.S. Herald during the Years 1845-1851: Under the Command of Captain Henry Kellett Being a Circumnavigation of the Globe…” (volume 1) by Berthold Seemann (London: Reeve and Co.,… Continue reading →

Is this why they call it False Creek?

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If you’re a newspaper reporter in post-frontier British Columbia, how do you get around the British-style libel laws of young Canada, so that you can write about what look like questionable dealings by government officials with the native… Continue reading →

Tillicum: spose mika engine cockshut…

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An advertisement in Chinook Jargon, in a post-frontier BC newspaper. As we often see in this time period, settlers could be expected both to be literate and to comprehend the pidgin. [My clarifications… Continue reading →

Tinas Martin

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Regular readers will understand that the Chinook Jargon word siwash migrated into Pacific Northwest regional English, with mostly distressing results. Today I’m sharing an 1898 local-colour piece from the Boundary Country of British Columbia,… Continue reading →

Hyiu Siwash kopa Chahko Mika

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This Chinook Jargon letter from Greenwood, BC, is not only a neat new example of the post-frontier, English-language-influenced, genre of writing in the language– –it also gets us closer to the origins of the… Continue reading →